Should your cooperative consider patronage dividends to owners? If you are already issuing patronage dividends, is your cooperative following the rules? If your cooperative receives patronage...
Food co-ops expanding from one to two stores must navigate a challenging and perilous course. This article will explore those challenges and obstacles and suggest a course of planning and...
A perfect storm may be brewing. Dangerous pathogens are evolving quickly. Listeria, for example, already a very virulent bug-hospitalizing approximately 2500 in 2006 and killing a full 20...
Held in Austin, Texas on October 24–26, the 2007 Marketing Matters Conference gave cooperators a chance to focus on marketing topics and strategies for the advancement of our stores. Nearly 50...
Walking down the rows of raised beds, blanketed now with cover crops and a light morning frost, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks earlier the Weavers Way Farm was bustling with volunteers...
Operators of factory-farm facilities claiming to be organic are feeling the heat from USDA enforcement actions. Responding to legal complaints filed by The Cornucopia...
This past October I participated in the biennial General Assembly of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in Singapore, followed by a tour of coffee and micro-...
In Minneapolis, within a period of a few weeks, North Country Co-op announced that it would be closing up shop after 37 years, while Seward Co-op-born in the same early 1970s era-held a...
Listen up! Year 2008 is going to be a difficult one, for reasons I have touched on in recent editions. We face unstable weather arising from global warming and unstable economies arising from...
In 1997, a group of retail food cooperative leaders got together to build the framework for an online, member-based resource to support the growth and development of food co-ops nationwide....
